Dirty Gerty's Hurdy Gurdy

GERTYHURDYGURDY

Monday, February 7, 2011

I wrote this yesterday, in the AM, and the poem, (complementing it), the afternoon before. Do forgive my not being on in quite some time. Truth be told, I've been ill. I was in the ER Friday night, but felt a bit better after intravenous Morphine and anti-nausea medications (IV). Now, I'm feeling quite horrid, again. I believe it all comes down to the Systemic Lupus... even so, I do hope you appreciate my theories set forth. I'm also providing a response I wrote, to this "philosophy," to negate any notion of my being "anti:"

Life requires a belief in origin and end. We go from womb to tomb, and in this physical experience, transcend the physical, make every concept of beauty and love a concept of imitation, from this. But what happens when this imitation becomes a limitation? When a person finds a womb in the tomb, from which all origin, all death, is just the consequence of nothing? I speak of such a state, because the eternal recurrence of the same is really the recurrence of nil. Or naught. To value life is to see this, because it is only in nothing that we can even define substance. So, when a person recognizes the futility behind everything, the vanity, if you will, they go from body to ghost, and spar with the very idea of life, as something that needs origin and end. They are post-mortem, but still the substance of being, trapped where invention ends, and all becomes the bait of an imaginary hook, looking for imaginary fish in imaginary waters. These waters are invented to feed an appetite of worth. It is from worth, the gem of contemporaneity, that people feed themselves. So art and beauty and love are self -affirmations. Made by the self, who needs to contraindicate death, and so doing, contraindicates truth. When Keats wrote of beauty as truth, and truth beauty, he was speaking to the importance of negligence. It seems this second decade of the 21st century communicates worth as the only means to enlightenment. One must have self-worth to understand life, as it should be: vibrant, fertile, a blonde sun. But this trend makes beauty and love and art the stuff of imitation; imitating Ego as if it were a mirror from which a better image was reflected. So Cogito Ergo Sum isn’t really the existence of thought, but the fabrication of thought, from what is considered most coveted and worthy. Still it is only in neglect that truth is revealed. A thought unfortunately lost on contemporaneity. The importance of negligence is a black tulip in a field of violets. It is neglecting the need for womb and tomb, for worth and affirmation, and even imitation. Art and beauty aren’t meant to imitate anything; they stand out by virtue of vanity. It is only when one is in the throes of nothing, of vanity, that art and beauty can be conceptualized as origins from which we are but imitators. Baudelaire spoke to the importance of beauty being both transcendent and tactile. Every culture has its own interpretations, and Ideals. But it’s unfortunate to think that every concept of collective beauty, cultural beauty, in the 21st century is an invention of worth. Transcendence is the transcendence of self, and what so many perceive to be beautiful, is really a broken mirror; pieces of what we want to be, what trend tells us we must be, to be important. There is an importance to trend. It gives conceptualization to chaos. It allows Ideal to flourish, and idealization to thrive in purity, even amid chaos. So the artist can re-create the turmoil, the tandem of mind, and find the scales balanced, can, in fact, create a line by dissecting a circle. Where the madness of closure is balanced by the structure of continuity. But trend, when its fundament is worth, self-worth, destroys art, because it makes art and beauty begin in creation, and end in decay. From womb to tomb, it aggrandizes the self, it makes the Ego a God, the demiurge that can so easily grasp bliss, and even transcendence. Bliss and transcendence are the origins of Ego conceit, even, and Ego conceit makes truth a mockery and lie. So, the self-worthiness of the 21st century, is, in fact, destroying art and beauty. We make art and beauty imitations of ourselves, when in fact, the thought that we are their imitators, has been so lost, so fundamentally forgotten, that the valueless nature of beauty is gone. It is all self, all womb and all our attempts to stymie the tomb. It is so important to us, yet we have lost its nature, so we’re feeding on lies; we’re living in the absurdity of thinking worth not only creates, but can be created, so long we reduce art and beauty to images of ourselves. Art does not decay, but creates us. It is the nil, the nothing we so fear. When a person comes to the realization that there is no womb or tomb, and there is no immortality, that person becomes an artist. Because even though we are born, and we die, and we dream Elysian immortality, the artist will always question just how these thought processes deceive us. The artist will be at odds with the world, as is, because the world, as is, rejects futility. As the Marquis said, happiness is ideal; it is the work of the imagination. All our creations are imaginations. But they are not our imaginations. They are the imaginations of truth. And truth is neglect; it is the recurrence of nothing in all we pretend has value. I say beauty is valueless because it isn’t something that needs worth. We don’t create it. We don’t even re-create it. Art and beauty are the things we must imitate; they are Cogito Ergo Sum, they want us to think, and be, but only with the temperament of a mood thriving, not in aspiration, but nothing. When you realize nil is the core to everything, you begin to see how we’ve destroyed beauty. We’re so obsessed with the trajectory of womb to tomb that we fail to see we are the tombs of a much grander womb. We’re dead in our continual affirmation of worth. But only when we deny it is self-worth we seek and procreate. An artist will go back to the womb; if all we are and seem is but a dream within a dream, as the great Poe said, an artist will be the one to wake up. But even, after waking, be the somnambulist of dreams much grander than conception. Art and beauty are nothing. They are not projections of our worth. They are the primordial, the mouth of a dead volcano, and the dreams of Dasein. Where most people sleep walk in dreams of worth, the artist sleepwalks in dreams of the valueless. An artist lives in half revealed vacancy and accuracy; respectively, the beauty of nil, and making an approximation of its truth by realizing we are only ever half there. And even though the torment of this, the thought that being true means neglecting that there is wholeness to self and value, torments with a ruthless temper, at least the artist can be a temperament of this. Can, in fact, imitate beauty and art not by being worthy, but by aspiring to a worth that the artist knows was never there. An artist will always temper the mood had, but never the mood wanted. It is for this reason that humility and suffering are the soul of beauty and art; when an artist humbles the suffering of pain and thought, the vanity of self becomes not revelation, but re-discovery. I fear so much the confines of worth. More so, the common thought that we exist in creation and revelation, when really we exist in destruction and re-discovery. There’s a danger to thinking we are always creators, and always worthy; we forget our lives are an imitation of something much grander, much more beautiful, of less, but more value, than anything we could ever possibly conceive. We aren’t Gods, but mirrors, and shatter ourselves when we think there’s any value to our own reflections.

The moon sleeps, but the sun dreams In showers of rain, dissects itself, Looks through a broken microscope At its invisible carcass, Amid the wet, the vapor, the flesh Of sweat that was once ambrosia, Once fell from its eyes, But as roots of the cypress, Its eyes no longer cry, for life. So I stand as a shadow to this.

A rose can only take so much From your eyes, A hue reddened by the pallor Of its own thorns, pricking your skin. You may look upon its red, And see the dusk, the secrets The rain withholds, breaking it, On the cusp of its very petals. Not seeing they, and the dawn, Once promised us, will fall apart.

The wilting part of a seed’s heart Crushed by your own shadow, Evaporates, raining on red rose petals. Give me your ghost, I say, a consequence of breath, The broken death of night, The broken heart of art. I am the shadow that will not feed, Cannot be pricked by dreams And bleed into their orange blood.

The mouth of a giant volcano, Wishes it were dead, but I am already there. You might see your star dissected From a grander dream, the rose bud, The rain fainting, upon its petals, The fire of a branded sea, Branded by death’s company, And so enlivened there, But I was always in ash, the dream awoken The broken breath, of your not so broken stare.

My response:

I don't want to come across too... anti... but what I'm trying to bring forth is the need for re-discovery. Instead of putting ourselves before the art, instead of putting our trends before the art, we should let the valueless nature of bea...uty and art conceive (of) us. So that all artistic experience is really a re-discovery. I came up with half revealed vacancies and accuracies when I was nineteen; I didn't quite understand it, then, I almost do now... just imagine nil. Nothing. Naught. See that as a core, that you discover, but in discovery realize is only half there. So you make an approximation of its truth, only to realize this truth is only half there. It seems, our approach in the 21st century, at least in pop culture, is to think art and beauty are our creations. Are extenuating worth, more importantly. Self Worth. There's a grand difference between self worth and self love. Whereas self worth confines us to fashion and trend, effortlessly, self love expands us to re-discovery, to find, in the midst of the universe, the vanity of all these concepts... beauty, art, love... when their substance is aborted. Baudelaire was right to speak of the transcendent beauty that every era has, and the material beauty, too. It only seems, to me, we've gone too material. Because we'd rather have worth over love. Everything seems to be about self-esteem, the EGO, and we are manipulated by our avowal (to this); so much we let trend overwhelm, and make ourselves (feel) better, be better, by conforming to trend. I realize every culture has conformed to trend, and trend does have its benefits, as I say, above. It's just, when you go into it thoughtlessly, you become the somnambulist, sleep walking through your very (own) dream of worth. But, when you realize, that concepts like beauty and love and art have no value, inherently, that we are substantiated by them, rather than substantiating them, you come to approach art as a means of re-discovery. The primordial, really. The nothing. Dasein. (Being). I know we all have complexes. I do; I'm ridiculous, absurd, posting pictures (of myself) to affirm my "beauty," because I so often feel hideous, and vile, even when I know a truth discovered long ago (by me): beauty is at best elusive and is its own design. You can only find it when you approach the vanity of everything. And the consequence of nothing. There's this bit in the Phaedrus where the idea that a beautiful specimen, physically, is so striking because it recollects the beauty of a self, in another, spiritual clime. Much as I love Plato, I don't see it that way. I'll admit, I'm a slave, certain (men) turn me on by virtue of their graces, my "muse" is beautiful by standard, for example, he'd be the envy of beauty, in its material ways. But I'm also aware, and keen, to the truth that the very nothing and futility we so fear, the valueless aspect of Dasein, is where real beauty, real love, and real art, resides. There are then two beauties, transcendent and physical, and they have no relation to each other, except to oppose. Transcendent beauty is the beauty of art, physical beauty that of fashion. And even as both are moved by trend, it is really those who can manipulate it (trend) and see beyond their own worth, the shadow of which they are really composed, it is only those who are artists. I've questioned if fashion designers, who specialize in the visual, can be considered artists. And, much as I love fashion, much as I adore Betsey Johnson, I do not think they are artists. Because they contribute more to the culture of worth, than the culture of love. And the culture of love seems to be one we have lost, because we ascribe far too much value to ourselves. Assuming we are the creators, of everything, when really, beauty, art, love, and truth are the creators of us (all). We imitate beauty, it cannot imitate us. Just as we imitate art, it cannot imitate us. It's all a matter of re-discovery, really. Because we are all part of a grander dream, from which the artist will always have already awoken.

About Me

I have an MA in English/Lit. I adore writing, the blood life, and am presently working on my poetry. I've written two novels and a novella, but have never attempted publishing them. Because they no longer feel honest to me. I should say. I've also been living with systemic lupus, with the diagnosis, since I was 19. When I turned 25, I was diagnosed with nephritis, a serious complication of lupus involving the kidneys. My kidneys have crescents and irreversible scarring. Yet, after chemo, prednisone, more chemo/immunotherapy CellCept...Myfortic (now) , I can say I am trying to keep myself stable. Needless to say, I do value life and beauty, which I define as the interconnectedness of nothing. Should you desire more, about me, message me.